Extreme Robotics Lab at the University of Birmingham campus

ERL virtual lab aerial viewThe ERL is one of UK's largest, newest and best equipped robotics research facilities.

With a 900m2 custom designed campus lab, including: in-lab supercomputer; advanced manipulators and high-spec robotic hands; high resolution sensors, cameras and industrial quality 3D imaging systems; wheeled and tracked robot vehicles; testing environments including mock-ups for different industries and applications; advanced human-robot interaction systems, including high-spec haptics, VR and AR devices, and human-robot control area including large multi-screen displays.

 

Professor Rustam Stolkin

Chair of Robotics

“ERL is one of UK's largest, newest and best equipped robotics research facilities...”

Our campus lab is coupled with a unique, full scale, heavy duty industrial robot test-bed off campus at Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC), developed with KUKA-UK. This features multiple KR500 three tonne robot arms with half tonne payload capability and 0.05mm precision. Additional equipment includes: another industrial arm, mounted on a high precision, five metres, actuated sliding rail; a multi-axis heavy duty positioning table; automatic tool changing systems; high precision force-torque sensors, vision systems, grippers and tooling. This is one of few full-scale industrial robot test-beds in UK (or globally) that is fully housed within an academic research environment.

We have particular strengths in autonomous grasping, manipulator motion planning and control, driven by real-time 3D computer vision. We are also prominent in Human-Robot and Human-AI interaction research, in which both human and AI collaborate in various ways to control remote robot arms and vehicles. However, we are highly inter-disciplinary - our world-class researchers have publications spanning numerous different areas of robotics, AI, machine learning, computer vision, image processing, dynamics and control, and related areas of applied mathematics.